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IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (12th)
SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.3%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.3%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.3%
Other87.4%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We're able to diagnose issues prior to their actually becoming issues. Without the alerting, we wouldn't have a clue as to what was going to happen. With the alerting, it gives us a heads-up that a specific threshold has been met, and we need to take specific action."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time."
"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"Ability to identify bottlenecks, deadlocks and slow running queries and run monthly and daily reports."
"The monitoring features are the most valuable; we have seen a major benefit from that so far."
"The solution primarily drives system information, and I believe it works fine."
"In every case so far we managed to move from a slow reactive type of non-monitoring toward a proactive monitoring for different layers within the organization and real insights into their IT environment from different angles."
"The ease of deployment, especially on Windows platforms, is valuable."
"If you are a large Microsoft shop then this product excels in monitoring Microsoft services."
"I like some of their newer features, such as maintenance schedules, because SCOM records SLA and SLO time."
"The good reporting capabilities was one of the major functions which made us choose SCOM as the tool for handling MS application operations (only used for that, not the OS platforms)."
"The solution is scalable. If you want to monitor more you have to buy more licenses, but you can add on. We don't plan to increase usage."
 

Cons

"With basic SQL training in my history, I've found at times I needed to Google SQL counters, for example, to understand what was occurring or how to configure SQL DM to be useful."
"I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information."
"One thing I'd like to see is the ability to view the execution plan and have the system automatically recommend potential query optimizations, especially at the query level."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"Some more granularity in alerting."
"We don't find that it helps us with performance monitoring and diagnostics. We find that SentryOne does that better. Also, in terms of alerts, we had to customize them dramatically so that we didn't get alerted on every little thing."
"Scalability is what I mentioned earlier, regarding room for improvement. It doesn't seem to scale out to an environment as large as ours, with just a single monitoring server."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"It lacks certain details that other products do better, like granular access and better application monitoring."
"It would be a much better product if Microsoft provided management packs with the product."
"If it could have SysLog capabilities and if the Microsoft Management Packs were out of the box instead of a separate download."
"Reporting could be improved, you get many reports out-of-box but they can be difficult to interpret and drill down into."
"Dashboarding and application performance management."
"It'll help if they can provide real-time or closer to real-time monitoring."
"Microsoft SCOM is an old fashion beast of a monitoring solution that offers basic monitoring out of the box and for a dime because it comes with licenses they forced on us anyway."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"The pricing is good, and it's part of their system center suite."
"It is the cheapest product available in the market."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"Two customers bought the enterprise agreement with Microsoft and paid for Software Assurance. But few customers don't buy it for Software Assurance. They just buy it and deploy it, and they think that we will be using it for the next five years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
 

Also Known As

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.